Kevin Nealon Looks Back on His 35+ Year Friendship with Garry Shandling

SNL alum Kevin Nealon has a wonderful piece out today at The Hollywood Reporter that’s a followup of sorts to yesterday’s news that a ton of Garry Shandling’s friends played one last basketball game at his house as a tribute to the late writer and comedian, and it’s a brief but sweet remembrance of Nealon’s 35+ year friendship with Shandling. Here’s Nealon on Sunday’s basketball game:

We haven’t played in the last couple of years, but on Sunday we had a kind of a semi-memorial for him with all the basketball players over the years. God, there must have been about 60 people up there in the game over the years. I was in his office just sitting at his desk looking at this stack of legal paper, just covered with jokes — all handwritten jokes — you know, everything. You couldn’t make up some of the jokes, and you know, just all of his interests and talents were in evidence and this wave of sadness hit me.